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Bacon craze is the theme for a West Bottoms benefit
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Bacon craze is the theme for a West Bottoms benefit
By TIM ENGLE
The Kansas City Star
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Figures that Bacon-Fest 2009 was cooked up at the Peanut on Main Street … over BLTs.
The event — 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday in the West Bottoms — is a benefit for the Rehabilitation Institute of Kansas City. As organizer Dana Chatlin tells it, when she showed up late for a meet-up of her dinner club last February, her friends pounced on her with the idea. They’d heard about Des Moines’ Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival and thought Cowtown needed something just as porktacular.
The dinner club members approached other Peanut diners: Would they come to a bacon festival?
Of course! Who doesn’t love bacon?
“And that was the extent of our market research,” says Chatlin, the institute’s director of external affairs. “Very fancy.”
Actually, the bacon block party, or at least some of the food and drink available, does sound kind of fancy. For a $30 ticket you’ll be treated to:
•Samples and cooking demos from the two local guys behind the world-famous Bacon Explosion, a bacon-stuffed, bacon-wrapped sausage delicacy.
• BLTs and bacon and pulled pork sandwiches with hot barbecue sauce and slaw (from Adam’s Rib in Overland Park).
•Chocolate lava cake with bacon ganache (whipped up by a chef at Ameristar casino).
•Maple bacon ice cream (courtesy of Murray’s in Westport).
•Bacon-infused vodka (from the Drop in midtown) and, for the first 100 people, bloody Marys with a bacon, smoked turkey, pepperoncini and olive skewer (from Belly Up BBQ).
Other food will include pizza (topped with bacon, natch) from Northern Lights Pizza and bacon breakfast sandwiches from Wendy’s. Boulevard Brewing Co. will serve beer (no bacon flavor here).
And of course there’ll be a performance by the Kansas City band Bacon Shoe, which, if we understand this correctly, has two guys rapping and a third guy wearing a dog head while frying up bacon on a grill. (Chatlin says the group is funny but “kind of vulgar. …We might have earplugs there for people who can’t handle it.”) Another band, Black Tie Propaganda, will play, too.
Other entertainment: a bacon-eating contest (entry fee: $5) and a bacon recipe contest ($10; bring a dish with bacon as the primary ingredient).
Attendees will get Bacon-Fest T-shirts. And you never know, a real live porker may be on hand for photo ops … and kissing.
Chatlin confesses some anxiety about a bacon-centric benefit — among other services, the Rehabilitation Institute helps people who have strokes, which can be caused by poor diets. But she hopes Bacon-Fest is seen as just a “casual, silly, fun” time.
Her goal is for it to become an annual event — “unless the PETA people and the American Heart Association protest too much. We’re hoping they look the other way.”
BACON-FEST 2009
The fundraiser is 11 a.m-2 p.m. Saturday at Foundation Architectural Reclamation, 1221 Union Ave. Tickets are $30 (21 and older only) and available at the event, at www.tribaconfest .kintera.org, or by calling 816-751-7815.To reach Tim Engle, call 816-234-4779 or e-mail tengle@ kcstar.com.
